Studying McLuhan’s theories, I have
come to understand that media as an extension of ourselves. In chapters 8-33,
McLuhan’s ideas are taken even further as media begins to extend itself. Most
people might refer to the past 14 years as the computer age, which is a true
statement in its own right. However, I believe we are entering a new age within
the computer age; social media. Technological advancements like Google, the
iPhone, and Twitter has changed the way we communicate and receive information
completely. A better way to say this is that computers are evolving.
Video sharing functions from when
YouTube was first introduced have become nearly obsolete. This is to say that,
video sharing has become a standard for social networking sites. Video sharing
within a social networking site has the potential to cancel out the middleman,
which in this case is YouTube. Search engines have even gone as a far as
tracking users’ Internet activity, in order to reflect their interest. For
example, I intern at Marvel Entertainment, LLC., so a lot of my time spent on
the web is related to comic books, specifically Marvel Comics. Instead of random
advertisements about stuff that may be uninteresting to me, I get advertisements
about Marvel Comics.
Observing functions of the Internet
like this is also comical, because it has pushed advertising companies to be creative
and overall pushy more than ever. Nowadays, you can’t even watch a simple
YouTube video without first watching a commercial; or experiencing that feeling
of being stalk, because the search engines are recording your every move just
to send you advertisements from visited sites (“Internet billboards”); or email
subscriptions that come in by the dozen on a daily basis.
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